I read an article yesterday from the Toronto Star titled: Laptop with family photos stolen from hospital room.

The story is about a laptop containing hundreds of sentimental photos that was stolen from an elderly patient’s room at a local cancer treatment center.

To make matters worse, the computer contained photos of the 89-year-old patient’s granddaughter who died in March from a rare form of spinal cord cancer.

Back it up NOW

I am a big advocate for backing up your data, it’s something we often put off doing or neglect all together. Theft, fire, flood and hardware failures can happen to any of us at any time. This is why it’s so important to have a great backup system in place.

I run a nightly backup with my MyBook external hard drive (affiliate link). I also use Carbonite, which is a service that lets you backup your encrypted data to the cloud, so that you can access it anywhere.

As my friend, Baratunde Thurston wrote: Please backup your hard drive now… twice! It was his story that made me begin taking backups so seriously, give it a read.

What do you use for backing up your computer?

As for the jerk who stole the computer, the police have security footage of the suspect. I hope they find him and throw the book at him.

Photo from Flickr by: daryl_mitchell

No related posts.

When I lived in Toronto I use to bike everywhere. I didn’t get my drivers license until I was 20, many friends still don’t have one. Between the public transportation (TTC), taxis and bikes, you really don’t need one (that) much.

I road my bike through the heat of the summer, rain and even snow. When I worked at the Toronto Star and lived in the Beaches I would begin each day with a pleasant ride along the boardwalk next to Lake Ontario. It felt great to start (and end) my day with a brisk five mile bike ride.

I don’t like hitting the gym very much. I love getting exercise, I don’t consider myself lazy. It’s just that I need to do active things that work me out without thinking about it as a way to work out. Make sense?

Since moving to Nashville I’ve put a few pounds on. I live a ways out of the city and to ride to work would be death. There’s very few bike lanes, so I’ve neglected my bicycle.

One of our cars died recently and my father-in-law was kind enough to lend us a small pickup truck. It’s the perfect vehicle to keep my bike in the back of.

Monday morning my plan is to leave about an hour earlier than usual. There’s a greenway not far from my house, so I’ll drive over there and hit the bike path. I’ve walked it before, it’s a pleasant journey along a river, through a forest and to a massive damn (really massive).

My vow is to start doing this and swimming at the YMCA regularly beginning Monday. It’s not so much about losing weight as it is about taking care of myself. Life is short.

What are you doing to take care of yourself? Any plans to start?

Bike video by Sam Javanrouh

Related posts:

1. Free TTC Subway Chime Ringtone My family and I recently had a blast visiting...
2. Moving Can Be Incredible My buddy Julien Smith wrote a blog post the...

I am increasingly getting my news from my iPhone, specifically from Google Reader. I can’t tell you how many mornings I wake up, switch my phone on, and read my feeds straight from my bed. I love the convenience and speed of RSS.

What is driving me crazy is that old media still doesn’t get it. Newspapers, please make your content available to me, so I can consume it in the easiest way possible.

The Guardian seems to be the only newspaper that has their full articles available in their feed. Other papers I’m interested in subscribing to like the New York Times, Tennessean, Toronto Star and Globe and Mail only share snippets of stories. Those snippets then link to the full story back on the corresponding site. This opens another window on my phone and takes time for the page to load. It’s annoying.

Ads can be added to RSS feeds, so if it’s concern for lost ad revenue why not add the ads? In addition to advertising, social bookmarks can be included in feeds. It’s a perfect way to help spread the stories straight from their original sources. I share things in my Google Reader all of the time, have a look below to see some of my recent shared items.

So how about it newspapers? How about publishing your full stories in your RSS feeds? Pretty please.

Related posts:

1. Overcoming Digital Overload | How To Slow Down The Tetrominoes Are you like me? Do you feel like you’re...